Don't Let the Coup Enablers Off the Hook

What happened yesterday at the United States Capitol was beyond shameful, beyond regrettable, beyond disappointing — beyond whatever mush-mouthed words Republicans will offer today and in the weeks to come.

It was a putsch, an insurrection, a violent mob intent on subverting a basic constitutional process, one that's been performed with rather boring regularity over and over again through wars (both Civil and otherwise), depressions (both Great and otherwise) and any manner of other things that have befallen or gripped us as we wrestle with the designed mess of democracy. 

These were not people merely expressing their opinions who got out of hand. Years of angry rhetoric and speech after speech after nonsensical speech stoking the grievances of people who claim to hate grievance culture boiled over into an eruption, as the Stochast-in-Chief urged them from one side of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other, saying: “We will never give up. We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore."

"You’ll never take back our country with weakness," President Trump said on Jan. 6. "You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."

"So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol," he said. "The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."

Of course, Trump didn't actually go with them. He holed up in the White House. But spurred on by a man who has consumed them with lies for the better part of five years, march they did to the Capitol, charging barricades, climbing walls, breaking glass and on and on and on, halting the business of the people and once and for all putting paid to the notion that America's greatest asset is its constant peaceful transfer of power.

Trump rightly is taking the blame, though of course not accepting it. His lily-livered effort at halting the sedition ended with him reminding his supporters — and they were indeed his supporters, despite whatever nonsense you'll hear and read from the Great Denial Swamps and also Tennessee elected officials (to the degree those things can be differentiated) — that he loves them and that they are special.

They sure are.

The man who claimed to be the law-and-order president, who at his inauguration warned of "American carnage," directly rejected law and order and sparked carnage himself. No, of course he didn't say "occupy Nancy Pelosi's office" or "get into an armed standoff at the Capitol." But all Henry II said was, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" and FitzUrse, de Morville, de Tracy and le Breton knew exactly what he really meant. They left Becket bloody on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral.

So yes, blame Trump — by all means, because he deserves it.

But there's lots of blame at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and no, those collaborators most certainly do not get any credit for ultimately voting to certify. 

Come hell, highwater and Helsinki, Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, along with the rest of Trump's courtiers, stood by fawning while he descended even further into Learian madness. Then there are the masochists like Ted Cruz (he who's married to the woman Trump called ugly, he whose father Trump accused of being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy). And there's Lindsey Graham, who nailed it in 2016 and who finally unknotted himself from the kraken's tentacles, exhaustedly proclaiming he was finished with the farce on the Senate floor in the wee hours after the coup attempt was pacified.

But even Cruz and Graham deserve more credit than do Tennessee's Goneril and Regan. At the very least, Cruz maintained the illusion that his opposition to certification was based on principle, unlike Blackburn and Hagerty, whose flip-flop was a tacit admission the whole charade was kabuki.

At least Graham stood up and said he was wrong. 

Blackburn self-righteously proclaiming that breaching the Capitol was a crime and that violence was wrong — seemingly in disbelief that she was complicit with her unwavering support for the cult leader who spurred it on — is like Pandora running around wondering why no one will close that box she opened.

Later, Blackburn tweeted, "I will vote in support of certifying the electoral college votes." All it took was open rebellion and a flag of treason flying in the halls of Congress for her to abandon the wicked farce. Brave.

Bravery isn't meekly and silently doing the right thing at literally the very last minute when you've known all along what the right thing is — when you've not only tolerated the mendacity that led to the violence, but encouraged and supported and parroted it. Bravery is telling people the truth when it's hard to hear, particularly when those people are your supporters.

Blackburn, like Trump, is a deeply unserious politician who has never grasped the great truth that her solemn duty is not to a man or a party. It is her duty to represent all her constituents, not to kowtow to the loudest and most virulent of those who already support her. Her oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies to the best of her ability really should mean something.

Beyond that, Blackburn, who claims to be this great exemplar of conservatism, has never seemed to understand the very foundations of conservatism: The institutional guardrails against mob rule and autocracy must be maintained, and ordered liberty tempered by responsibility is a fragile inheritance that has to be cultivated and protected if it is to be passed on. They cannot be discarded for the fleeting, ephemeral trinkets of power or the pot shards of ambition.

Sadly, Hagerty seems cut from the same cloth, though at the moment his only two votes on the record have both been "against" Trump.

The two will almost certainly try to wriggle out of the net in the weeks and months to come, claiming their obsequiousness at the altar of the wannabe child-god wasn't what it seemed. But disingenuously placating the madman to sate their own thirst for power and influence is as despicable as the only other alternative, which is that they really did support this toxic malefactor all along, right until he started poisoning the well they drink from.

They were warned, and it doesn't take a genius — or even Lindsey Graham — to see this is how it was always going to end. 

Tennessee's U.S. senators, for the time being, finally stopped applauding. But never forget how long they clapped.